On Media

Buchanan as cable TV teaching moment

By DYLAN BYERS

02/27/2012 11:41 AM EST

Brian Stelter digs into the recent breakup between Pat Buchanan and MSNBC in today's New York Times, and finds evidence of what was already known: Buchanan believed that he was the victim of blacklisters who caused the network to overreact to his controversial book, "“Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” in which he voices concerns about "the end of white America." MSNBC, which has grown increasingly partisan, politicized, and progressive in recent years, believed that Buchanan's views were incompatable with its values.

For those who have been following Buchanan's drawn out departure from the network, that's not surprising. But the real nut graph in Stelter's piece isn't about Buchanan. It's about MSNBC and cable news in general:

As cable news channels like MSNBC and Fox News Channel have grown highly politicized, they have become arbiters of the bounds of acceptable discourse — not always a comfortable role for those involved. A corporate allergy to controversy sometimes exists, even though controversy is what sometimes motivates channels to hire commentators and compels people to watch.

(This is even true for CNN, which has counterintuitively aimed for the middle by bringing on partisan political contributors who are equally prone to controversy.)

The partisan divide on cable television is as obvious as it is in American politics, and seems hardly worth mentioning. Less discussed -- and wisely noted by Stelter here -- is the influence the networks have on "acceptable discourse" whenever they choose to hire, fire, suspend, or accept the resignation of a pundit or political contributor.

By defining which viewpoints are acceptable for the network and which aren't, Fox News and MSNBC are drawing the lines that define the nationally recognized "conservative" and "progressive" viewpoints, even if there are plenty of conservatives who believe Fox is too far left, and liberals who believe MSNBC is too far right.